The 22nd of February 2016 is a date celebrated around the world by Girl Guides and Brownies – World Thinking Day. The date represents the birthday of founder Lord Baden-Powell, and WTD encourages Guides and Brownies to think about others around the world and the Girl Guide movement.
In support of this year’s event, youngsters from the 17th A Leigh-on-Sea unit based their afternoon and evening activities on the theme of communication. Essex Ham helped out by allowing over 20 brownies, guides, seniors and unit leaders to send greetings messages.
Essex Ham was one of the 15 UK stations taking part this year (2016 TDOTA station list), helping to make radio accessible to youngsters. To serve as an introduction to amateur radio, the two groups watched the excellent Amateur Radio – A 21st Century Hobby video, which features a girl guide leader’s perspective on the hobby, youngsters enjoying amateur radio, and a number of Essex Hams.
The callsign in use for the event was GB4LGG (Leigh-on-Sea Girl Guides), and although set up for 2m and DMR, 70cms was used for the contacts made between 5:30 and 8:30pm
A big “well done” to all of the youngsters, plus the seniors and leaders, for having a go.
Other activities on the night included learning and practising the phonetic alphabet, and the Essex Ham team has been asked to sign off paperwork to allow those who made successful radio contacts, to get their “On The Air” communication badges.
Thanks: A big thanks to Dorothy M0LMR for handling many of the greetings messages, and also starting off the Monday Night Net, which clashed with the Girl Guides greetings messages. Thanks also to Brian 2E0WHB for handling greetings messages and sending words of encouragement to those taking part.
Thanks as well to the Essex Repeater Group – We made use of GB3ER, the Danbury 70cms repeater for greetings messages as simplex was a little scratchy.
Thanks also to M0WDG, G4HCK and G7OED for finding us and making contact on-air, and to all at the 17th A Leigh-on-Sea Brownies & Guides for making us welcome.
Lovely photos, and sounds like they all had a good day, and very happy to have helped them gain their communication badges, lovely to chat to them all ,
on such an important guiding day xx
Nice to have taken part and helped out in a small way, I was a boy scout myself and loved being part of a group, let’s hope we see many of the brownies and guides becoming active members of our radio group in the course of time.
Be prepared :-)
Bri